DVD player - audio quality difference

Hello everybody,

At present I have a stereo speaker system consisting of a Marantz SR4001 receiver and a pair of PSB Alpha B1s. This is driven by a Sony DVD player that I picked up about 3 years back from the US. I use a step down transformer to get it powered and playing.

I am looking to upgrade the DVD player to obtain playback of Divx formats and in general to improve the sound.

My question is - how much of a difference in audio quality can be seen between these two DVD players - the Philips 5986 and the Marantz DV3002. One costs Rs. 4500 and the other costs Rs. 12000 respectively. Is the difference in price commensurate with the improvement in audio quality? I am not too bothered about HD video quality because I do not have an LCD or a Plasma television.

Hi,

If the upgrade is motivated by DivX support and better sound quality, I have no doubt that you would be better off buying the 4K Philips DVD player, and a dedicated CD player with the remaining 8K. Even an used CD player would be good enough.

So, the dedicated DAC found in the Marantz and better construction will not translate into better audio quality?

thevortex

You Marantz AVR is powered by 32 bit Currus Logic DSP, one of the best in the world. DSPs from Cirrus Logic, Burr Brown are very well respected.

My take on this would be like this. Buy a DVD Player that acts as an excellent transport for DVDs, and CDs, and allow the AVR to do the DA conversion and amplification. Connect the DVD Player to the AVR using a optical fibre cable so that the data goes in digital form to the AVR. Since you have been using the AVR for some time, I am sure your ears would have been acclimatised to the sound from the AVR.

The thing to watch out for in a DVD player is the specification and support for video up-scaling.

Given this scenario, both the Philips and Marantz sound expensive. You should be able to get good DVD players from Pioneer (DV 400 and DV 600) and Samsung (something like a HD 860) for much less. Denon DVD players are also good, though I am not sure how much they cost.

Venkat,

Thanks for the thoughts. One question though. I thought that connecting via a Coaxial would improve the audio output.

The Philips 5986 is in the same price band as the Pioneer DV400 and the Samsung 1080p. The HD860, unfortunately is not available anywhere here.

I am also thinking about a HTPC setup instead of a traditional DVD player now.

Hi
Vortex

I have hd 860 model, it stopped coming last year, after that hd 870 came out, now the current running model is 1080p from samsung which is very good, will recommend to go for that, i am myself looking to get the same

Dushie,

Would you rate the Samsung 1080p above the Philips 5986? As far as I can see the difference is that Samsung has a 14bit Video DAC. As otherwise everything appears to be the same.

Well the samsung has better specifications than the philips,of course the convertor is also 14bit in samsung, personally i have used samsung and i would recommend that, also look at the costing part, i think price difference between both is not much. should cost under 4.5 k.

when i bought my had 860, i got hdmi cable free with it, just cross check on the same too, philips at that time was not providing the hdmi cable free,

The Philips is giving a 1 GB USB drive - not sure about the HDMI cables. I will check the Samsung and see how it goes.

The HTPC idea too is under consideration.

1 gb usb drive cost rs 250, so i wont consider that to be a major factor, so check out the details regarding hdmi cable too